Dead in the Water (17 page)

The cork popped out. And something streamed out with it, black and grotesque, tentacled and clawed, reeking of the grave; something flew into the fog and spread itself over the horizon. A single howl, like that of a wolf.

A caw of a bird. A dead man’s laugh.

Ruth quailed. Evil, evil. A demon genie had escaped. The ills of the world … an old story popped into her head. That woman, the curious one, the Greek—

Pandora? Done!

Immediately, the bottle shattered. Walls of glass shot into the fog and rained into the sea, churning the depths. Sheets of glass, rods of it, chunks as thick as cars, as sharp as guillotines, plummeted within inches of the lifeboat. The water frothed as pieces like transparent knives pitched headlong beneath the surface. Gulls shrieked like harpies across the rising waves. The ocean boiled with agony.

We will laugh again, Ruth
.

And everything vanished.

Ruth—in a dream that had to be real, a delusion that had to be happening—sank into stillness.

And you, Dr. John Fielder? Do you dream of us as well? Can the fog creep inside you and make you set sail for us? Let us see what dreams may bring you bobbing to our harbor
:

Beneath the surface, John huddled in the white box. The sides flaked mint-green paint that caught and eddied in the water. The fit was tight; he could hardly move, or breathe. That didn’t matter; he was afraid to do either—although somehow, he could breathe if he wanted.

Something undulated at his temple. He jerked, forced himself to remain motionless. The something crawled along his skin. Inside his head, he managed a weak, sick laugh: the dark brown thing, so threatening, was a lock of his own hair.

Christ, he thought, and then he had no thoughts, only a sliding fear as the light appeared, parallel with his chest. A hundred fathoms away in the water, or maybe just an inch, it glowed dimly in the icy blackness. His stomach clutched and he flattened himself against the frigid, hard surface. He’d prayed he’d be safe there.

He was a fool.

The watery light made a circle. His heart contracted and he held himself rigid. Ice floated around his knees, his belly. His bare skin glistened a pale blue, as if throwing off a reflection of sky and clouds.

But the things that bobbed overhead weren’t clouds; they were icebergs, a field of rock-hard thunderheads. Thousands of sparkling dots rained from them, ocean snow, diffusing the light into a poisonous yellow mist. Moving only his eyes, he watched the things. His hair wafted in the water, and brought images of tentacles, and air hoses, and heavy, weighted chains.

Will this be how I drown?
Yet he breathed; he lived.

A stinging jab pricked his shoulder; another, the inside of his elbow. Another, another, another. At the perimeter of his nipple, blood welled into a pin dot. He winced, forcing himself not to squirm. Spots of blood rose on his body like a disease—

like that disease—

—then ran together to crease into long, paper-thin cuts. The sharp-edged things bounced off his arms, his legs, his feet, drifted downward. One landed on his cheek, pinched, swirled in a current. Shards of glass, hundreds of them, razor-sharp.

He flailed at them, and found something jutting from the sides of the box. Handholds. A shelf. He tried to hold on to the outcropping. Beneath his palms, wood splintered and softened. It broke into waterlogged chunks that pirouetted in upward spirals past his shoulders, mingling with the glass and
his blood. The bits of wood separated into fibers; he found himself thinking of tuna and the way it flaked when he made sandwiches for—

for—

The fear slid thickly into his guts, spreading through his veins. Oh, God, where was Matty?

His heart blasted against his spine. His pulse roared. The skin on his face tightened as he pressed his lips together. The hard surface chilled his backbone. Vibrations roiled through the water, sending the bone-soup into a counter-current.

His boy, his boy, where was his boy?

Daddy, here I am!

Matty appeared before him, chubby-cheeked, blooming with health. He stood in the water, and yet he didn’t; he stood on the deck of a ship, a sleek white ship whose deck was varnished wood, and yet he didn’t. Behind him, a rail coursed around tiki torches that cast warm shadows on his face; neon lights set into the deck lit Matt from below.

But the figure beside his child remained shadowed, dark, indistinct. It held Matty’s hand and looked at John.

Matty waved excitedly.
Here I am!

Healthy and happy and full of life.

Full.

forever.

Ah, yes, good doctor. A noble desire. A passionate yearning. Yes, that will suffice
.

Laughter reverberated over the water.

And you others
:

Here, Ramón Diaz. This can be how dying can be for you, if I so desire
:

Like a stream, trickling down the center of your heart. Wearing away the earth of your life with a wet, sugar tongue and a gentle tickle; until you cave in from the breastbone, and all the clay that you are mixes with the sea. Your guts, like man-of-war jellyfish, disembodied hearts pulsing along, along, along.

For you, Phil
: like a still pond of water, into which you knowingly step, lie down, and cross your arms. Our martyr, our Ophelia. Or will you become a man at the end, and fight?

Or for you, Elise
, you who savor your seething discontent like those cigarettes you smoke: a death like the ocean, brutal, fierce, and merciless. Sweeping over you in galvanic fury, flinging into your face your insignificance as you thrash and go under. Your helplessness. The fact that you have no power, that you can be torn into pieces so easily, so wonderfully. Think of it. Think of your arms, wrenched from their sockets. Your eyes, ripped from theirs. Or perhaps your skull will be bashed into a pulp, and the bits of your brain extracted like seeds from an overripe papaya, and fed to the sharks.

Yes, or we will hang you from the side of the ship, yes, hang you so they can leap from the water and gnaw at you. Shins first, toes. Or upside down, so they will mar your beauty first. Have you ever seen a woman whose nose and lips have been chewed off?

Have you ever met the kind of man who could do it?

Who has done it?

Yes, yes, oh, yes.

So nice you can join us. So nice.

And as for you, Donna Almond …

Half-asleep, Donna put her hand around the barrel. Happiness was a cold gun. When she pulled herself together, she’d unload it. Everyone was behaving very well, no chance of mutiny or cannibalism with this set. Of course, they’d only been at sea for a day, and the belief in being rescued was strong at this point.

Her gun ferried ammo across the ocean, but the safety was on, even though a .38 Special didn’t have one.

She was the safety.

Her cheekbone fitted nicely against John’s shoulder, and she sighed, allowing herself to drift closer back toward sleep. Plenty of food and water, and flares, and the signal would
lure someone to them. Everything was copacetic, as Glenn would say.

Glenn. Fuck it. When she got home, she was going to ask for a transfer. It was the only answer. Okay, that was okay. There were other shoulders in the sea. Even now, she was vaguely horny, nuzzling John, young Dr. Kildare. He was a bit timid, but he had such a capacity for caring. And he could patch her back together whenever the streets got vicious. She bet he sewed stitches tight and small, less chance of scarring. Yeah.

Back to sleep now, Donna. You can sort all this later. Now listen, this is how it will be when—

That fucker, Ramón. She would get his ass and get it good. Sue the hell out of them? She’d get them put away for life. Life imprisonment. Yeah.

This is how it will be—

Ramón in a cell. Yeah. Ramón in a big glass box. Ramón under glass, his nuts in a fingerbowl. Right on. Right on, right on, right fucking on.

Sleep, now, old girl. Sic him later. She chuckled to herself, silently, because sic sounded like suck, and after all, she was a cop with a nasty mind. A sleepy, incoherent, but still nasty—

LISTEN!

Sleep now. Yeah. Man, she was cold.

GODDAMN YOU, LISTEN TO ME! WHEN YOU DROWN, THIS IS HOW IT WILL BE WHEN YOU DROWN. AND YOU WILL! YOU WILL DIE!

Sighing, she let herself go.

YOU BITCH! LISTEN—

Swimming parallel, with the safety on.

Swim parallel
.

Dreaming, Donna fought her panic down as she kicked her arms and legs, but it was hard to stay calm when the world was nothing but endless, heartless gray. She made a circle in the water. There was nothing to see. Water, water, everywhere, no lifeboat, no
Morris
, no people. Nothing to cling to, nothing to save her. She was alone, alone, all, all alone.

She took a hard breath as the undertow grabbed her ankles and yanked her into colder, thicker water the color of lampreys and sharks. Wind whipped her hair from her forehead, frozen and harsh; if she didn’t drown, she would freeze. She shook so hard the muscles in her legs and stomach twisted into throbbing cramps.

The waves surged around her, crashing over her head and forcing her under the surface. She choked down filthy, icy water that shot down her throat and stung her lungs; it gathered in her abdomen like an anchor and dragged her down,

down,

down.

There was death in there, a million parts per million’s worth. She must get out, or it would kill her.

She tried to tread water, but she was too tired. Never in her life had she been so exhausted. She couldn’t raise her thighs, couldn’t move her wrists. As she surveyed the gray sea, the gray sky—

—why, it was fog, all around her; she was swimming in fog!—

—she knew she was going to go under once too often, and not come back up, and then it would be over, all over.

No! She stirred. Dreaming, she told herself. She was only dreaming. The realization should have comforted her, but it did not, as she struggled and gagged and slipped under again.

Something bumped her hip.

What do you want?
The same voice she had heard on the
Morris
and yet, not the same. A voice to fear.

But not as much as that other voice. That other, that one that had spoken of thirst and darkness.

Or had it been a different voice?

What was happening?

Bile rose in her throat. Something cold slithered over her. In her sleep she imagined it was a shadow crossing the sun. She tensed, balling her fists. Or dreamed she did. The coldness crept over her face, over the top of her head, and then someone drilled a hole in her forehead and poured ice water over her brains.

Evil, evil. Something grotesque seeped inside all the cracks and weakest places; God, it was going to fucking kill her with its stinging, razored ice.

What do you want?

“Nnnothing—” she managed, as her brain froze over.

Then she heard a scream, followed by a gurgle, and she whipped around on top of a huge wave. Disoriented, she cried out. Water rushed into her mouth. Dreaming, she reminded herself.

The little Lake Tahoe floater struggled at the base of it, eyes huge with terror. He sank; for a moment, she saw his red
mittens, the hood of his black and red ski jacket, so lost, so hopeless, as the wave rose up, up, like a wall of gray stone, and folded back on itself, and crashed over him. Donna was carried with it, and she flailed for him as she slammed back down. But seaweed tied her hands and feet; she was helpless, and then something hard smacked her at the base of her skull, and all faded from whale-gray, to pewter-gray, to the blackest of black terror, grief, remorse.

“Unh, unh,” she stammered. Dreaming, damn it, dreaming.

And yet,
real
, as she pulled herself free, arms and legs wrenching from the kelp of the undersea forest, and sped toward the surface, unhindered. The boy was not her fault, not; these things happen—

NO
! someone shouted, at the same time that she forced her eyes open and raised her head off John’s shoulder.

In the fog, a shape the size of a sea serpent hurtled toward them. Muzzily, she gripped the side of the lifeboat and tried to make sense of the image. Silently it sped toward them. She glanced around; everyone else was asleep. Matt’s mouth hung open, slack—they all did. They looked as if they’d been drugged.

Huge, sleek, a monster. Donna swayed as adrenaline shot through her veins. Christ, get it together, she thought; despite her terror, she couldn’t seem to focus—

The blast of a klaxon—

“Jesus!” she shouted. It was a ship!

A huge, sleek cruise ship bore down on them. The fog evaporated as the bow sliced through it, fading into wisps that evaporated into nothingness. The sky above the vessel beamed clear and blue. Deck upon deck of sparkling white loomed above a hull of white striped with aqua. On the stack, a green figure of a mermaid sat on a rock, her arms open wide.

“You guys! Hey, wake up!”